Books: British Isles

Field Guide to the Dragonflies and Damselflies of Great Britain and Ireland (Brooks/Cham/Lewington)

Hardly a snappy title but an excellent paperback field guide for those restricting their observations to the British Isles. This shares Richard Lewington’s excellent illustrations of the Djikstra/Lewington European field guide. This has a very useful section on some of the dragonfly hot-spots to visit.

ISBN: 978-0956490285 (paperback)

Britain’s Dragonflies (Smallshire/Swash)

An excellent paperback photographic field guide, produced by WILDGuides and complete with protective plastic cover, crammed with information including lifecycle, larvae identification, where to look – everything, really. Absolutely perfect for those restricting their Odonata hunting activities to the UK.

ISBN: 978-1-903657-29-4 (paperback)

Atlas of Dragonflies in Britain and Ireland (Edited by Cham/Nelson/Parr/Prentice/Smallshire/Taylor)

Definitely not a field guide but a wonderfully produced, a large format reference work crammed with encyclopædic information covering all the species resident in the British Isles, together with occasional migrants/vagrants. Several photographs from this website feature in its pages.